Sock punk....

Sometimes I think I'm quite young at heart and reasonably up to date. Thanks to music channels & two teenage daughters I know and like a lot of the current music. I'm up to date on my celebrity gossip and I've even read most of the popular teen books like the Twilight series. I often find myself inserting "like" into every sentence (eg. " It was, like, so exciting!") But every now and again reality strikes....

Like the other day when I arrived home and Sian let me in. "Sock, punk" she said as I passed on my way to the kitchen. Hmmm, I thought, sock punk? Is this the new greeting of choice amongst the young? A bit weird but then, so are lots of things....

Some time later I asked Sian what "sock, punk" meant. Looking at me with curled lip/disdainfully raised eyebrow she told me it wasn't in fact "sock punk" but "s'up, punk?" short for, I was told, "What's up, punk?"

However "sock punk" has become the favourite greeting between me, Kate & Sian these days!


"Sock punk" herself...or should that be "Stock punk?"

The other thing that makes me feel old is I can no longer work most of the technology in our house. The other week Phil & I went to COSTCO to buy catfood and came out with a home cinema sound system (as you do), apparently Phil had wanted this for ages. Much connecting of wires and inserting of scart leads followed plus a couple of trips to the outlet village for DIFFERENT leads and bits of stuff and we had surround sound that shook the house (especially when Sian and I watched Terminator 2...)

Now, I think the new bit of kit includes a DVD player ( we already had one but that was also a recorder...) but because we are still missing some bit of kit we can't do something or other or listen to surround sound on something else (are you confused yet, because i certainly am!) and of course it came with a remote control; bringing our living room total to 4. One of which was supposed to be a "master" remote control which you could supposedly program to do all the functions of the others (only it doesn't...) and I can't use that one AT ALL.

I can use the sky remote although I sometimes can't actually get the TV onto the sky channel. I could use the first DVD remote but only to play (recording on the hard drive is still a mystery to me!) I can use the TV remote but then that doesn't do much. The home cinema remote I've hardly dared to touch.

Since the advent of the new kit I can barely get the TV to function. I sit hopelessly pressing and pointing remotes at the TV, crying and swearing with frustration. It's not too bad when Kate is home because she can at least get things to work after a fashion. But when I'm alone in the house it's very depressing...

In the dining room we have freeview which I never figured out and a DVD player. I wanted to use my new Pilates DVD in there the other day (as it's at the back of the house and passers-by won't be able to see me flailing around on the floor trying to do the routines) so I asked Phil how it worked. "Just switch the TV on and put in a DVD and it will automatically come on" he assured me. HA!

It didn't. So there I am hopelessly pressing buttons on the TV remote and the DVD remote and nothings happening. The TV remote needed new batteries but even with this nothing happened. Eventually the girls came home but even they couldn't help so I ended up in the front room with the curtains closed trying not to drop my hand weights on the cat....

When I asked Phil he muttered something about a lead probably having been unplugged so a playstation could be used... NOW he tells me! It's still not working ....

I've turned into one of those elderly people who "don't understand this new-fangled technology" and it's driving me NUTS!!